


Mellow Is The Word

by unbelievable2



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Sentinel Thursday Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1299562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelievable2/pseuds/unbelievable2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mellow <i>(mélou)</i> [M.E. <i>melwe</i>, <i>melowe</i> prob. fr. O.E. <i>melo</i>, meal]<br/>1.	Adj. (of sound, colour etc) full and rich, not harsh..............</p><p>(For Sentinel Thursday Challenge #496 - "mellow". It's says slash but, honestly, it's barely there!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mellow Is The Word

Mellow ( _mélou_ ) [M.E. _melwe, melowe_ prob. fr. O.E. _melo_ , meal] 

_1\. Adj. (of sound, colour etc) full and rich, not harsh_

It’s a lovely evening, and not just by Cascade standards. The windows are open but the sound of the street below is hardly intrusive; some folks having an evening walk, a low hum of traffic on the far boulevard, some kids still up and playing somewhere in the lasting daylight. The sun has been heating the Loft all day and its low rays are now seeping in, touching everything with gold and amber; it’s as if the colours are soaking up the palpable warmth of the air in the lounge. 

Jim stretches out his long legs and lets his head fall back against the cushions, feeling very comfortable and content with everything where it is right now. Blair looks up from the papers he has strewn all over the table and smiles. It’s an odd smile though, Jim reflects. While Jim’s smile back is full of the relaxation and well-being that he’s feeling right now, Blair’s is – what? – a little sad, a little uncertain? And yet it’s been a good day, surely? Professionally successful and satisfying; a team playing at the top of its game. For Jim, that professional satisfaction becomes a personal one that in turn reinforces his pleasure in what he sees around him right now. Sandburg at his dining table is the key element there; he knows this now, not that he ever intends to tell anyone that. So doesn’t Blair feel that contentment, too? 

“Hey, Chief,” he starts, his idea being to draw his friend out of whatever odd mood he seems to be in, and the best way of doing that is to get him to talk about stuff – any stuff. “What was that letter you had from Milwaukee this morning? Looked pretty official.”

Blair immediately looks away and shuffles his papers with an exaggerated gesture, as if suddenly realising he’s lost something incredibly vital.

“Letter?” he replies vaguely, his eyes flicking through his work. “Oh, that letter. Ah, that was just… you know… about that thing. I just thought I should… well, you know. Hey, it’s nothing world-shattering, man.”

And Jim keeps looking at him, and Blair keeps his eyes averted; and as Jim feels the warmth leach out of the room, he begs to differ.

 

_2\. Adj. (of mood) warmly human, genial_

Simon opens his mouth to reply, and then shuts it again, to make sure he measures his words first. So his potential _“You tell me you never had a clue?”_ in fact comes out as:

“Jim, what do you expect him to do? He’s a young man who needs to find his place in the world and the PD is doing nothing for him right now.”

He’s dragged Jim to Mulligan’s on his own to try to find out what has been eating his best team over the past week. And now he knows, it’s no surprise to him.

“He wanted to be a cop.” Jim’s face is set rigid, as ever at times of great emotional stress. A stranger would think the man just a hard bastard. To a good friend, though, the signs are obvious and are reinforced by the grating voice.

“Yes, he did. But don’t you think it was as much to please you as to find a new career? To tell you the truth, Jim, I think it was a mistake, myself, now. Basic cop life is constraining him. He’s too good for what he has to do, too talented. It must be supremely frustrating for him. I’m not surprise he’s thinking about academia again.”

“He wanted the roller-coaster,” mutters Jim.

Simon pauses mid-way into a sip of his red wine.

“Excuse me?”

“He said - ages ago – that academic life was like a merry-go-round. Being a cop was like the roller-coaster and he didn’t want to get off.”

“We changed the rules for him, Jim. In fact, we finally gave him rules. It doesn’t suit.”

Jim is hardly listening.

“I thought we’d sorted things. I thought he liked how we’re working, I thought our team was great; _is great_. I thought home… I mean, the Loft… was great. He’s comfortable there. I mean, surely he’s comfortable there?”

Simon sighs, and takes another long gulp of the wine.

“Have you ever asked him?”

Jim looks at him in puzzlement.

“Asked him how things are working for him, Jim?” Simon continues, trying hard to be patient. “There’s more to life than material comforts. He’s a brilliant man…”

“He’s a goddamn genius!” retorts Jim, anger from a million slights against Blair’s capabilities over the years surfacing still. “I don’t know why the best colleges in the land didn’t want him!”

Simon has to hide his smile as Jim’s perennial urge to defend Blair leads him into inconsistency.

“Well, up until now they didn’t, and for good reason, as you well know. Maybe Milwaukee is the first to see the light. And anyway, have you ever told him that?”

Jim looks at Simon through the bottom of his beer glass.

“Huh?”

“Told him he’s a genius.”

Jim empties the glass before he replies.

“I dunno. I haven’t told him a lot of things I should have.” He makes to stand up.

“I need another drink.”

Simon grabs his wrist.

“Have some of this wine. It’ll be better for you than more beer.”

He sees Jim seated again, reaches for the spare glass on the table and fills it.

“Tell him what, Jim?” he says, as he passes it over and sees Jim down it in one gulp. “Tell him what?”

 

_3\. Adj. (of a person) having the kindly understanding and sympathy that comes from age and experience_

“I’m sorry, Blair, I guess I shouldn’t have come over…”

Blair reaches over and slaps Joel hard on the arm.

“Joel, my man, you are always welcome. You are always welcome because you are a true friend. Because I will always turn to you for advice. Plus, you’ll stop me from getting drunk.”

Joel regards the empty scotch bottle on the coffee table and the newly-opened bottle of Christmas port, over half of which he has watched slide down Sandburg’s throat in the thirty minutes Joel’s been at the Loft, and decides that part of his task for the evening is a lost cause.

“And I’m turning to you right now, man,” continues Blair, reaching out to fill his tumbler again. He picks it up, and then offers it with exaggerated care to his visitor.

“No, thank you, you know I’m driving, Blair.”

“That’s true, my friend. Don’t want you in some god-awful wreck somewhere. Don’t want to lose you, too, man. I’ve lost so many people….”

Blair gives an enormous sniff, and the glass wavers precariously in his right hand while he wipes his eyes on his left sleeve.

“Don’t say that,” implores Joel, truly distressed to see his young friend like this. “You have people everywhere who love you, Blair. What is it that’s causing you so much pain? That means you have to leave us, leave Cascade?”

The tumbler is emptied yet again, and Blair places it firmly on the edge of the table, where Joel catches it before it hits the floor.

“Don’t wanna go, Joel. Don’t wanna go, but what can I do, hey? What can I do? I try and I try and I try. But nothing’s ever good enough for him. And it’s all I want to do, really. Make things good for him. All I’ve ever wanted since I met him, Joel, all this time. But he’s never going to see that. And if things can’t be all right here, Joel, then I can’t just keep existing in this hopeless place I’m in. Best thing is a clean break….”

He slices his arm through the air in front of him and topples back on the couch as he does so. He struggles back up again, Joel helping.

“A clean break - no harm, no foul. Each of us can go back to ‘Life BS’.” He makes huge air-quotes, which cause him to lose balance again.

“Life … what?”

“BS! ‘Before Senses’! Or hey, even better - ‘Before Sandburg’!”

 

He hoots with laughter, then pulls himself up from the depths of the couch once more and reaches for the bottle. Joel quickly moves it away.

“Aw, man, what you wanna do that for? I’m barely tipsy!”

“Just take a breather, eh, Blair? Take a breather and see if you can’t tell me more about what it is that would make things right for you?”

Joel is floundering; he knows it. He thought he had come here to talk through Blair’s concerns about his job and now he’s an Agony Aunt. Come on, he counsels himself, you’ve lived, there’s not many things you haven’t seen in your life, not much about the human condition you’ve haven’t helped people through. You can do it for Blair; most of all for Blair….

“A miracle,” says Blair, with sudden gravity. “An honest-to-God freakin’ miracle.”

“Don’t you think you should just tell him?” asks Joel, surprising himself with his clarity of thought. “Just tell him how you feel? He’s not as brave as you, Blair.”

For some reason, Blair finds this completely hilarious, and falls sideways on the couch, laughing helplessly.

 

_4\. Adj. (of wine) well-matured, smooth, free from acidity_

“You’re right, you know,” says Jim, suddenly.

“I am?” Simon feels he couldn’t be farther from persuading Jim of the best course of action.

“Yeah, the wine was a good choice. Better than beer. You know, I don’t usually feel it’s a man’s drink in a bar. For a lawyer, maybe, but not for a cop, anyway.”

“Well, thanks for that, Jim,” mutters Simon.

Jim puts out a sudden hand and pats Simon’s arm; Simon looks at the arm in shock.

“Don’t take it the wrong way, Captain. I’m just saying, beer for cops in a bar is about the stereo-type, isn’t it? We adhere too much to stereo-types. I do anyway. I realise that now.”

Simon checks the tally, and realises that they are three bottles down. And he’s been the slower drinker all evening.

“So it seems to me,” continues Jim, in that same musing tone, “that it’s time I got rid of those stereo-types.” Simon is glad it seems to be making sense to Jim because it sure isn’t making much sense to him.

“And it’s a good red, this. My favourite, too; a Zinfandel.”

“Yeah, a good smooth red,” Simon finds himself agreeing, his brain happily switching to non-contentious ground. “None of the acidity that can make your tonsils dry up….” 

_What’s happening to me?_ thinks Simon, bemused, as he listens to himself speaking. _We’re talking all evening about love and life, and now here’s a short segue into Winetaster Weekly?_

“It’s mellow,” says Jim firmly.

“Yeah, that’s it, Jim. Mellow is the word.”

Jim nods, and turns the bottle round to face Simon.

“See? It says so on the label.”

 

_5\. Adj. (of fruit) soft, ripe, and sweet_

For some reason they’re both in a cab. Simon must have drunk more wine that Jim had realised, as his captain seems intent on taking the same cab to drop Jim off first at the Loft and then continue to his own house.

As if Jim couldn’t be trusted to get home on his own. Huh. Must be drunk.

The cab rolls up. Jim automatically looks at the Loft windows and there’s one small light showing - the table lamp by the couch. So maybe he’s still there.

“Okay, Jim?”

“Simon?”

“I said, ‘okay?’. You know what you’re going to do now, yeah?”

“Do?” Jim fumbles with the door handle. He really needs to get upstairs and see whether Sandburg is there. To see whether he can get Sandburg to smile at him again. To feel his presence in every molecule of the Loft, in every molecule of his life. Because it can’t be any other way, can it?

“You and Blair are going to have a talk, aren’t you?” Simon is sounding a tad irritated, who the hell knows why that should be. Hey, he’s the one who’s drunk, after all.

“Go home, Simon, I can take it from here just fine,” says Jim, tripping slightly over the edge of the car door as he gets out.

“Talk to him!” yells Simon as the cab draws away. Jim waves vaguely and heads inside, up the stairs, one at a time, and then along the corridor to his home. Their home. The door is unlocked.

He stands by the couch and gazes at the unlovely slight of Sandburg sprawled along it, his mouth open, snoring loudly. There is drool, there is sweaty clothing, there is a puddle of something on the coffee table next to an up-turned tumbler and the whole place smells like a distillery; a high-class distillery.

He doesn’t need to use his weird-ass senses to see the bloom on the other man’s cheek, highlighted by the glow of the table lamp, and the slight glistening of stubble, to see the sweep of his lashes, the breadth and wisdom of his brow, the curve of his lips, and the moist invitation in them; soft, ripe and sweet. 

He watches Blair breathe - in and out, in and out – so that the world slows down to a pace he can be comfortable with. 

 

_6\. Adj. Very mildly, benignly drunk_  
7\. v.t. - to make mellow  
8\. v.t. - to become mellow 

Somewhere in his meditative state, the Shaman of the Great City senses the presence of his Sentinel. He cracks open an eyelid to see said Sentinel suspended upside-down, smiling lopsidedly.

“You drunk, Jim?”

“No, just very … mellow. Yeah, I’m mellow,” replies the inverted Cop of the Year. Blair huffs, tries to roll over and gives up.

“Well, I, my friend, am wasted, with a capital ‘WAY’.”

Jim leans down to take his arm and Blair helps turn him the right way up again.

“You been drinking alone, Chief?”

“Me? Am I that sad an individual? No way, man! Captain Joel Taggart of great renown has been keeping me company glass for glass. Well, maybe not glass for glass, but the thought was there….”

Jim sits down beside Blair, still holding onto his arm. Blair looks at him defiantly.

“Do not tell me we need to talk, Jim. We are done talking. We’ve never got it right yet and we’re not going to start now.”

“No, Chief, let’s not talk, okay. But what about if I speak and you listen? Would that work?”

Blair rubs his eyes, and tries to think.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’re drunk, Jim.”

“And then,” continues Jim, gently insistent, “you speak and I listen. How about that?”

“You won’t remember what you said in the morning. It’ll all be gone away again, like it always does…” Blair’s voice trails off with a little hitch in it. Jim slings his other arm over the man’s shoulders and draws him in.

“What if I promise to remember, tomorrow morning and every morning for the rest of our lives, Chief? How about that?”

Blair surreptitiously rubs some snot onto Jim’s t-shirt and looks up, a trifle suspiciously. The gaze he meets is steady, which is more than he can say for his own.

“Okay,” he concedes. “We can give it a try, I guess.”

 

_-Fin-_


End file.
